Waiting.

Waiting. A word very familiar with adoption. Waiting for God to show us when to begin the process. Waiting on God in prayer. Waiting for a referral. Waiting for appointments, waiting while collecting information about your entire life. Waiting for homestudy documents, interviews and reports. Waiting on USCIS, fingerprinting appointments, fingerprinting results, reviews, reports, waiting for approval from China, waiting for USCIS approval again, waiting for the resources to come in for the fees, waiting for travel approval, etc, etc. And when the expected wait is even longer than you anticipated, (and there's a real live child without a family waiting), as a friend put it, one day can seem like a year. We are now one of those adoption families who has been delayed by US bureaucracy. Our 1880 has been delayed because of one sentence in our already approved homestudy report. We have already been approved by China and once by our caseworker and the USCIS but this time around he wanted us to have our agency reword one sentence. The result: $360 fee, more forms to fill out and another 4-6 weeks of waiting.

To top that off we've been waiting for an update of Lily for over a month. As everyone knows waiting is not fun. But there is always a reason. And we must trust God's timing and plans. A dear friend recently texted me some encouraging scriptures. Then I was reminded of a commentary on waiting by Charles Swindoll. As I read it today one of the same scriptures my friend sent me was in there.

I will trust and I will wait.

Results of Waiting

Esther 4:12--17; Isaiah 40:31

Don't think for a moment that God is whiling

away His time, busy with other things. Remember, He may be invisible,

but He is at work. That's the beauty of His invisibility. He can be

moving in a thousand places at the same time, working in

circumstances that are beyond our control. During a waiting period,

God is not only working in our hearts, He's working in others'

hearts. And all the while He is giving added strength. Remember

Isaiah's words about waiting?

Yet those who wait for the LORD

Will gain new strength;

They will mount up with wings like eagles,

They will run and not get tired,

They will walk and not become weary. (Isaiah 40:31)

Even though the prophet's pen put these words on the sacred page

centuries ago, that verse of Scripture is as pertinent and relevant

as what you read in the paper this morning---and far more

trustworthy. From this verse we learn that four things happen when we

wait.

First, we gain new strength. We may feel weak, even intimidated, when

we turn to our Lord. While waiting, amazingly we exchange our

weakness for His strength.

Second, we get a better perspective. It says we "will mount up with

wings like eagles." Eagles can spot fish in a lake several miles away

on a clear day. By soaring like eagles while waiting, we gain

perspective on our situation.

Third, we store up extra energy. "We will run and not get tired."

Notice, it's future tense. When we do encounter the thing we have

been dreading, we will encounter it with new strength---extra energy

will be ours to use.

Fourth, we will deepen our determination to persevere. We "will walk

and not become weary." The Lord whispers reassurance to us. He puts

steel in our bones, so to speak. We begin to feel increasingly more

invincible.

We'll gain new strength. We'll get a better perspective. We'll store

up extra energy. We'll deepen our determination to persevere. All

that happens when we . . . wait.

.